Seeding Rules

Seeding rules introduce a smarter calculation of what torrent needs seeding, instead of just starting the next one in the list, and sort torrents based on a Seeding Rank.

Two of these ranks are based on desperation, which prioritizes your torrents based on how needy they are. Torrents are assigned a Seeding Rank. The torrents with the highest Seeding Rank will start until we don't have any more open slots. The rest will remain in a queued state, ready to be started once a seeding torrent drops in ranking, or completes in some other way (seeding rules). Alternatively, if a queued torrent gains a Seeding Rank higher than an actively seeding torrent, the queued torrent will start and seeding torrent will stop.

One side effect is that the order of torrents can fluctuate within short periods of time. "Minimum Seeding Time" was added to stop the torrents from continously stopping & queueing, only to be started again. Sometimes you will see a queued torrent with a higher ranking than torrents that are seeding. This feature is the cause of that. When the minimum time for one of the seeding torrents runs out, it will go back to queued state, and the torrent higher on the list will start seeding.

Seeding Rank Types

Peers:Seed ratio. The higher the ratio, the more desperate the torrent is, and the higher the Seeding Rank will be. This places torrents with 0 seeds at the top of the list, with the exclusion of torrents with 0 seeds and 0 peers (or you can set your peer limit when seeds are 0).

Seed Count. In this mode, we first sort by number of seeds ascending, then sort by number of peers in the order you specify via the "prefer larger swarms" field, and then give the torrent a rank. Similar to Peers:Seed ratio, torrents with 0 seeds and 0 peers are sent to the bottom of the list.

Timed Rotation. Torrents will be rotated in and out of seeding mode. The length of time they remain seeding is set by the Minimum Seeding Time setting.

None. Completed torrents will be started based on their # in the list. You have total control of the order of seeding.

Several options were added to tweak the desperation rankings of the torrents:

When torrents have the same rank, prefer larger swarms

When two or more torrents end up with the same Seeding Rank, you have a choice of preferring the torrent with a larger peer+seed count, or one with a smaller count. The advantage to seeding a larger swarm is that you are helping more people. The advantage to seeding a smaller swarm is that your bandwidth will be more noticed. Note that if you are mostly seeding torrents with very low seed counts, seeding a larger swarm means you are helping out more people AND your bandwidth will noticed a lot.

Lower Seeding Rank for torrents with no seeds and less than X peers

This option is for users who don't care about torrents that only have X number of peers. For example, if you feel it's pointless to seed a torrent with only one peer waiting, you can set "X" to 2.

Pretend there's 1 full copy for every X peers

The more peers that are downloading a torrent, the more theoretical traffic they are preforming, and the less they need seeds. By pretending there's a full copy for every X peers, you lower the ranking of torrents with a lot of peers.
For example, you have the following torrents:

By default, in Peers:Seed Ratio mode, the order would be G, A, (B or C), (B or C), F, E, D. The other in "Seed Count" mode would be C, E, F, G, B, A. However, if you pretend that there's 1 full copy for every 5 peers, it'll look like this to the seeding rules:

In "Peers:Seed Ratio" the order will now be E, G, F, C, A, B, D.
In "Seed Count" mode the order will now be E, C, F, D, G, B, A.

First Priority

I hope the configuration page explains itself well enough.

The main reason for "First Priority" is to allow continuation of seeding after a torrent moves from downloading to seeding. In fact, the two elapsed time options will not work at all for torrents who already finished in a prior Azureus session.

Also note that torrents with 0 peers can't be tagged as 1st Priority.

Ignore Rules

Ignored torrents will have their reason displayed in the "Seeding Rank" column in the "My Torrents" view. Ignore rules apply to all Seeding Rank types.

Ignore torrents with at least X seeds

This option is for users who don't care about torrents that have lots of seeds. If you think it's pointless to seed a torrent with 100 seeds, set "X" to 100.

Ignore torrents that have at least 1 seed for every X peers

Do you really want to seed a torrent that already has 100 seeds and 100 peers? Set "X" to 1. Don't want to seed a torrent that has 10 seeds and 20 peers? You can do that too.

Ignore torrents with 0 peers

Defaulted on. When set to off, torrents with 0 peers will also be seeded. This is usefull if you started the torrent or just want it to display an active seed on the tracker's page.

Ignore torrents that have a share ratio of x : 1

Used to be "Stop Ratio". But now, the torrent just gets ignored if the ratio is at least X:1.